Six States Down

Brinkley to Senatobia MS. Still in the 50's in the morning. Arm and knee warmers again to start. Overcast. First order of business today is the memorial for Darrell. We are outside at 6:00 am. We form up in a circle with a space for the "missing man". Eric Kloor has written a poem that paints a vivid picture of Darrell. This will also be read at the funeral. Rev Scott closes with some very comforting words. We are going to ride to breakfast at Gene's a little place about a mile away. Mike tells us not to expect much in the way of service. I don't think they do too bad getting out 30 breakfasts. Will and Sandra are running like thieves in the night. Leaving before some have been served. James, Pat and I are in no particular hurry. When we do get on the road we ride with Pete and Russ. So we are 3 Brits and a pair of bicoastal Yanks. You wouldn't think we were a organized group with someone stopping to water the weeds on the side of the road every few minutes. Pete and Russ stop and wave us on. So we are back to our usual 3 man, 1 mile pull per man group. Just before the first SAG we get on the Mississippi River Trail(MRT). This is a designated road that runs on both sides of the river from the delta to almost the start of the river. We turn and head to cross the river the road is narrow with no shoulder. The bridge itself is fairly high with all the ship traffic though as I cross I see only one barge upstream. The water is so muddy. It kind of looks like flowing clay. We stop to take pictures on the MS side. There is a welcome to Arkansas sign on the bridge for the west bound traffic. I don't know how the picture will turn out the only safe place to stop is pretty far away from the bridge. At least I got a shot of the welcome to MS sign. Now the road is concrete slabs and every two bike lengths is a little jolt as I go over the joint. We come to the lunch SAG and soon after we arrive Will and Sandra leave. Sandra tells us before they leave Will is pushing hard to stay in front of us. We eat and just as we about to leave James discovers a cut side wall on his tire. He sticks a dollar bill in the tire. This will get him in for the day but the tire is shot. We get to a small town called Crenshaw. Will, Sandra and her husband are there. The story later is Sandra's husband wanted to stop for bar b que. That's fine he has a car. We keep riding and now we are into the days climbing and it will be up and down to the finish. Nothing really steep or long but 2 or 3 short climbs a mile. Into Senatobia we a turn but end up going straight to Main St our destination. We stop just before the motel for chocolate milk and snickers. We have rap at 6:00 pm. A large group of us go to Pizza Hut for dinner. It's a disaster. They run out of every thing. I end up giving part of my family size order to Tom and Conrad because they ran out of pasta. They ran out of personal pizzas. If they wanted a med pizza the would have to wait a 1/2 hour. The salad bar was dismal. At the end they couldn't figure out the check for the other table. Paul came late to this party because he went to mechanic's time to discover he has a cracked rear rim. No bike shop till Monday. His equipment is Campagnolo and the spares in the truck are Shimano. Needless to say they can be used together but not very well. As I write this a storm is moving in. Tailwinds tomorrow.